FINANCIAL TIMES: Black gold: “Royal Dutch/Shell's drive to recruit more than 1,000 engineers in exploration and production (EP), revealed in yesterday's FT, has an added wrinkle in the US…” (ShellNews.net) 19 Jan 05

By Clay Harris

Published: January 19 2005

Royal Dutch/Shell's drive to recruit more than 1,000 engineers in exploration and production (EP), revealed in yesterday's FT, has an added wrinkle in the US. No jobs above a certain level (JG2) can be filled unless it can be shown that at least one "person of colour" has been considered, according to an internal e-mail sent by a Shell EP human resources manager in the US.

"Given that there are a limited number of candidates internally, we will need to go to the external market for most if not all jobs," the e-mail says, implicitly illustrating why Shell has decided to step up its drive for "diversity and inclusiveness".

Shell defines a "person of colour" as "US nationals or foreign nationals on indefinite local terms, e. g., green card status, who are black, Hispanic, Asian/ Pacific islander or American Indian/Alaskan native".